Raising the retirement age for pilots puts America's aviation safety at risk
Flying has never been safer in the United States. Our country's current approach to aviation safety is clearly working — the U.S. is the gold standard for aviation safety around the world.
Despite this achievement, lawmakers working on the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill are considering introducing new risk and rolling back safety regulations just as passengers are returning to the skies.
Right now, some in Congress are seeking to unilaterally raise the airline pilot retirement age from 65 to 67 without scientific study or safety research. What we do know is that this ill-conceived proposal could introduce more risk into our aviation system, disrupt airline operations, cause more flight delays and cancellations, and increase ticket prices for passengers.
This political exercise would also put the U.S. in conflict with the international retirement age standard. As a result, some pilots would be limited to flying only domestic routes, and thousands would need to be retrained to operate different aircraft types and for different positions.
While the U.S. airline industry as a whole and most airlines individually have more pilots now than before the pandemic, raising the pilot retirement age would not increase the number of pilots. To the contrary, a retirement age increase would worsen the pilot training backlog that resulted from the pandemic and is just now beginning to level off, and it would introduce a new and unknown risk in a system that's currently extraordinarily safe.
The Windy City has no need to be reminded of the importance of maintaining the highest standards for safety. Chicago was the site of the worst air disaster on U.S. soil, in which 273 people lost their lives in 1979. In the more than 40 years since that horrific crash, our nation has learned a lot about aviation safety. Eliminating risk in the air transportation system has made the level of safety we enjoy today possible.
As part of this effort to eliminate risk, our country also reviewed accidents that were, in part, the result of pilot inexperience and inadequate training. For example, in a study of accidents that occurred between 2001 and 2010, the FAA noted that crew inexperience played a significant role in a Beechcraft 1900 that landed unintentionally with its gear up at Chicago O'Hare International Airport in 2001. Thankfully, the passengers and crew sustained only minor injuries in that accident, but others in the decades before Congress changed the law were not so fortunate.
Drawing from the lessons learned about the importance of airline pilot experience, Congress passed the Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010. The regulations that resulted dramatically improved airline pilot training and qualification requirements while acknowledging differing levels of pilot experience.
For example, a pilot with military flight training and experience needs 750 hours of flight experience to pilot an airliner. Aviators with accredited four- or two-year college or university flight training must have 1,000 or 1,250 hours, respectively. And those without an aviation degree or military aviation background need 1,500 flight hours.
Given the success of our current approach to aviation safety, I have to ask: Why are lawmakers now considering weakening the very standards that make our skies the safest in the world?
As Congress considers the FAA reauthorization legislation, which sets the standards for aviation regulations, air safety champions like Illinois Democrats U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth and Rep. Jesús "Chuy" Garcia, who have been leading the fight for safe skies, are facing strong headwinds. Special interest lobbyists in Washington are arguing to arbitrarily raise the pilot retirement age without analyzing the safety and operational consequences and roll back pilot qualification and training requirements, the repercussions of which are clear to all.
These proposed changes to air safety are driven by some airlines' pursuit of profit at any cost. Although they received substantial support during the pandemic, some airlines still failed to prepare for increased travel demand. The result for passengers has been flight delays and cancellations and other operational issues that have been exacerbated by foreseeable challenges such as summer weather. Poor decision-making by some airlines should not be used to justify efforts to introduce new risk or roll back safety.
Over my 25 years as an airline pilot, I've flown into and out of O'Hare and Midway Airport many times. As a Chicago native, I recognize the critical place that safe air transportation holds in this city's past as well as its future. Thanks to its efforts to reduce risk, the U.S. has marked over a decade without a fatal commercial airline crash anywhere on our soil.
As lawmakers continue to debate the FAA reauthorization bill, the stakes for air safety couldn't be higher. Weakening safety standards or introducing new risk is nothing less than a recipe for disaster.
Capt. Jason Ambrosi is the 12th president of the Air Line Pilots Association, International, which is the world's largest airline pilot union representing more than 74,000 airline pilots in the United States and Canada. He wrote this column for the Chicago Tribune.
